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Science Technology

Storing Liquid CO2 in the Oceans? 242

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the what-a-gas dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "One of the ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to capture carbon dioxide at its source, when it is emitted from power plants for example, and to store it in other places, such as depleted oil and gas reservoirs or even the ocean after liquefaction. But, according to Youxue Zhang, a professor at the University of Michigan, there are pitfalls in this last plan. If the carbon dioxide is not injected deep enough, it can come back to the surface and return to the atmosphere, which is obviously not the desired goal. But, even worse, the liquid-to-gas conversion could happen too suddenly, which could cause a potentially dangerous eruption. So Zhang has developed a model which shows that liquid CO2 would have to be injected to a depth of between 800 and 3,000 meters to keep it from escaping from the ocean."
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Storing Liquid CO2 in the Oceans? More

Storing Liquid CO2 in the Oceans?

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  • Eeeeek! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Chocolate Teapot ( 639869 ) * on Saturday November 05, 2005 @05:35PM (#13959340) Homepage Journal
    This guy sounds like a bloody terrorist! Quite apart from the explosion risks mentioned in the article, a quick Google for carbonated seawater [google.co.uk] reveals a couple more scary tidbits. Firstly, Science News Online [sciencenews.org] references a paper which sttates
    "The greatest mass extinction in Earth's history may have resulted from a release of carbonated seawater"

    And this site [willthomas.net] kindly points out the following:

    "But when dissolved in frothy, carbonated seawater, all this CO2 becomes a corrosive gas."

    Not to mention the environmental effect of millions of farting & belching sea creatures. I think we should keep a close eye on this man :)

  • Recycle, don't trash!

  • I know one group that benefits... (Score:5, Funny)

    by penguin_asylum ( 822967 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @05:38PM (#13959357)
    Today was a great day in the history of coca-cola production.

  • explosion? c'mon (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Douglas Simmons ( 628988 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @05:40PM (#13959366) Homepage
    First of all, the ocean's commonly miles deep. Burry the co2 another few miles and the liquid leaked, a little chaos theory over that distance would dissipate the concentration that when it hits the top and is gas, there just wouldn't be enough gas around your flare gun for it to be an issue. The hard part is getting it that deep.

    OTOH I failed science.

  • Coral? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kulakovich ( 580584 ) <slashdot AT bonfireproductions DOT com> on Saturday November 05, 2005 @05:41PM (#13959369)
    Wouldn't it be easier, safer, and more intelligent to just protect and encourage coral growth? Coral pretty much does everything we need, if we could just give it an environment to 'do its thing' none of this would be a problem. The entire strategem is rife with deadly pitfalls and screams of huge opportunity to burn energy that produces more CO and CO2. Think about it.

    kulakovich

    • Re:Coral? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by MichaelSmith ( 789609 )
      Wouldn't it be easier, safer, and more intelligent to just protect and encourage coral growth?

      Coral is extremely sensitive to heat. Global warming can cause Coral dieback [google.com.au] which could make it harder to encourage further coral growth.

      But certainly, converting CO2 to solid carbon is the only future proof way of dealing with the problem.

      Of course, to do this you need to put the energy back in...

  • The complex... Made more complex. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mulletproof ( 513805 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @05:41PM (#13959371) Homepage Journal
    Or you could just dump some iron into the ocean to supercharge plankton growth [wired.com]. Probably cheaper, easier and a tad more of a natural way to do it.
    • An idea worth looking into, however eutrophic systems have their own problems with runaway growth and subsequent oxygen depletion.
    • Right, in the same sense that it is more natural to take a swig of batrachotoxin [wikipedia.org] than of coca cola.

      You are favoring a method that makes a huge (and most likely quite unpredictive) change in ecology over one that has no effect on nature because it involving plankton means it is "natural".

    • From the wired article: "By the time we've burned all our fossil fuels and the atmospheric CO2 levels have reached 1,000 ppm, we might find ourselves in a wonderful, plant-loving greenhouse. Or we might be trapped in a steamy hell, with waves drowning the coastlines and killer hurricanes pinballing around the Caribbean so frequently that the Weather Service runs out of names." (Emphasis added)
    • Or you could just dump some iron into the ocean to supercharge plankton growth. Probably cheaper, easier and a tad more of a natural way to do it.

      Well, to quote from actual Science (well, at least the magazine):

      The relatively modest increase in carbon export does not appear to be large enough to make iron fertilization a viable method for sequestering anthropogenic CO2, however.

      This Week in Science [sciencemag.org]

      The full paper reference is:

      Robotic Observations of Enhanced Carbon Biomass and Export at 55S Durin

    • You also don't really want to encourage that much plankton growth, as many phytoplankton produce volatile halocarbons. Feed the weeds, reduce the CO2, and blow a hole in the ozone layer you'll never forget. There's another Science article from around 1999-2000 discussing metals in marine systems, which mentions that the biogenic halocarbon production is approximately equal to anthropogenic sources.

      The obvious answer is to eat more sushi, and get that Nori under control.

  • hmm yes. now *thats* responsible (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Phil246 ( 803464 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @05:41PM (#13959372)
    didnt anyone tell him that carbon dioxide can dissolve in water to make carbonic acid?
    does he honestly think that acidic seas would be better for the environment?

  • Best Idea Yet (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I love this kind of thinking. It's just like burying our nuclear waste and unused chemical weapons. Gee, nothing bad could EVER come of that.

    Maybe... eventually... people like this will come to the realization that you can't hide everything when you only have a limited amount of space. This is just another example of short-sighted solutions that lead to future generations problems. Sweeping everything under the rug doesn't solve a damn thing except letting corporations get away with being more environmental
    • Personally, I'm a big fan of the idea of a space elevator leading to an outer-space dumping yard. Just package waste into suitable canisters, send them up, strap some rockets to them and fire towards the nearest star or gaseous planet. If they headed to, say, Jupiter, the atmosphere would instantly crush them into tiny pebbles as they headed towards the core.

      The biggest drawback to all this is that it depletes a finite source of material over time. We only have so much of everything, and if we fire
      • You really don't know quite how large the earth is, do you? Something on the order of thousands of tons a year [google.com] of micrometeorite dust accrete to it every year. (Some figures say much, much more than that.)

        Now, depleting the world's store of certain rare elements, well, that might be worth kvetching about. But making earth shrink appreciably? I think not.
      • The biggest drawback to all this is that it depletes a finite source of material over time. We only have so much of everything, and if we fire it out towards gas planets or just towards nothingness, well, it's gone for good.

        Uh, it might be finite, but it is VERY LARGE!

        And, the more of it you toss towards Jupiter, the less you need the elevator in the first place. If mass erosion really becomes a problem a billion years from now, you can sleep well knowing that as the Earth is carved up to make space statio

  • This would be a BIG mistake (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rubberbando ( 784342 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @05:44PM (#13959392)
    I remember reading an article a few months ago about large amounts of CO2 being trapped under lakes and being released all at once due to being disturbed by an earthquake or some such. Anyways, all of this CO2 came forth and being such a heavy gas, it lingered in the populated area and sufficated whole villages/towns.

    If we just bury / submerge the CO2, this could happen all over again. Thus wiping out any life in the area it occurs.

    As a side note, if someone out there could find the article I'm referencing and post it, it would be appreciated.
    • Here [bbc.co.uk]'s some BBC coverage of one of these lakes in Cameroon. Terrifying.

    • Re:This would be a BIG mistake/ Found the Link (Score:4, Informative)

      by rubberbando ( 784342 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @05:49PM (#13959433)
      Here is the Link [pbs.org] to the story I was talking about.

    • Re:This would be a BIG mistake (Score:4, Informative)

      by splerdu ( 187709 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @05:55PM (#13959463)
      I believe something like that was shown on BBC Science and Nature. The show title was "Killer Lakes".

      The theory is indeed about having large amounts of CO2 trapped at the bottom of a body of water. When its disturbed, the CO2 escapes to the surface, and being quite a dense gas kills quite a number of O2-loving lifeforms through suffocation.

      http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2001/killerla kes.shtml [bbc.co.uk]

    • Re:This would be a BIG mistake (Score:5, Informative)

      by CodeBuster ( 516420 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @06:03PM (#13959514)
      There are several lakes in equatorial Africa which by virtue of their depth and location sequester large amounts of carbon dioxide gas in solution and create a potentially dangerous situation. The incident to which you refer occurred at Lake Nyos in the Northwest Province of Cameroon on the 21st of August 1986. The lake emitted a large cloud of CO2 gas when the waters of the lake were disturbed by an underwater landslide and the gas bubbled up from the depths of the lake. The resulting cloud of gas flowed down the hillside and through the surrounding areas killing 1,800 people and 3,500 livestock. Degassing pipes have since been installed at Nyos and other similar lakes to allow the stored gas to be gradually released from solution and thereby prevent another uncontrolled release.
      • Degassing pipes have since been installed at Nyos and other similar lakes to allow the stored gas to be gradually released from solution
        Oh, so they're intentionally releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

        \me shakes his head and walks away.

        • Because having a (relatively) small amount of C02 venting into the atmosphere over time is much worse than having a huge gas bubble erupt and kill a thousand people and then go into the atmosphere anyway.
    • CO2 Lake overturn basically happens when the bottom of a lake becomes so saturated with CO2 that geological disturbances can cause the trapped CO2 to erupt and rise up to the surface. All of the documentaries so far mentioned point to the lakes having natural reservoirs that pump CO2 into them, and even then they take many many dozens of years building up their CO2 contents before they get to the point where they can erupt.

      Do you think there's realistically any chance that we produce CO2 in such large quant
    • I know it's not fashionable to RTFA but those occurences are mentioned right there in the article.

  • Not a Good Idea (Score:3, Funny)

    by SkuzBuket ( 820246 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @05:45PM (#13959401)
    When CO2 is dissolved in water, the substance is known as "Carbonic Acid" This is already measurably happening to our oceans naturaully (due to higher carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere), and accelerating the process could have severe impacts. Maybe we should just enact an exhaling tax. If people exhaled more conservatively, this wouldn't be as much of a problem.

    • Exhaling tax... (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Exhaling Tax would never pass. The people who make the bills would suffer the most as they blow hot air full of CO2 all day for a living.

  • Plusses and minuses... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Sheetrock ( 152993 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @05:50PM (#13959434) Homepage Journal
    It's important to the growth of industry to find new ways to responsibly bury pollutants, and as CO2 is one of the most prolific byproducts and a greenhouse gas I applaud the thinking behind developing this technique.

    In addition to allowing CO2 to recombine with the system in a more natural way (next to the O2 in the water that makes up the C), this offers the side benefit of transforming ocean life dumb enough to swim through the layer to freezer-ready seafood.

    However, it is important to note that fluidic injection of a medium density liquid between two light density liquids is neither the safest nor most effective method of obtaining a clearly-delineated stack. Anyone who has mixed a layered drink will tell you that you go from highest density to lowest density, pouring each layer of liquor against a spoon so as to prevent gravity from making an environmental disaster of your nightcap. Pumping liquid CO2 into the sea thus begs the question of what sort of sludge should go under it to replace the water (and where to find a spoon that large.)

  • Could CO2 be better used in sealed greenhouses? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by NZheretic ( 23872 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @05:50PM (#13959437) Homepage Journal
    For large establishments such as Coal or Gas power-plants, would it not be better to "scrub" the emissions close to the source and feed the "cleaner" CO2 and Nitrogen byproducts into sealed greenhouses to force feed specially genetically engineered bacteria and flora.

    The resulting biomass could even be feed back into the energy cycle.

    By the way, it was John Wyndham who first popularised this concept.

  • I mean, simply plant more vegetation or trees. The amount of deforestation in the world is amazing. In Haiti for example, it's very bad. When I was in school several decades ago, I learned that green plants use carbondioxide to make chlorophyll - that green pigment in green plants. And they in turn release oxygen. This would be a better solution. Am I wrong?
    • Am I wrong?



      Sort of.

      The problem is: The vegetation on this planet has problems to keep up with the sheer amount of CO2 released by humanity. Of course, deforestation doesn't help at all, but even without it, the plants couldn't extract all of the additional CO2 from the atmosphere.

      • If you keep harvesting the trees, making it into paper, and burying them in anaerobic landfills, you can remove as much CO2 as you want over the long term. And when we run out of coal, we can just mine the landfills.

  • Plan to clean up the air.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Eric Damron ( 553630 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @05:58PM (#13959480)
    Poison the ocean...

    Good plan guys. Keep up the good work!

  • Roland Piquepaille Watch (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 05, 2005 @06:13PM (#13959558)
    Roland must be paying /. even more now, since not only their posting his shit like crazy, but they let it stand as top news item for a long while.

    Subscribers must be pissed...

    Myself, I can only join the rest of the Roland Piquepaille Watch squad in a unison Nelson-like laugh: "HA-ha!"

    And no, mods, this ain't offtopic. Look at the submitter and his submissions history to see what I mean.
    • As much as I dislike Roland's style - at least he's not linking articles via his money-making technology blog anymore. Which was the main gripe I had with him.

      So now ,to me, he's just another bonehead slashdot article submitter.

  • Kyoto (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Crouty ( 912387 )
    US citicens oxidize far more carbon per man than the citicens of any other country on this planet. It's about time to prevent the unnecessary production of CO2 in the first place. And no, cruising around in fat-ass SUVs does not count as "necessary".

    Oh, and while we're at it: Please vote a president that will submit the Kyoto Protocol for ratification. Ferkrissakes even China signed it!

    • Ferkrissakes even China signed it!

      Methinks China's terms in the protocol may have been a bit more to their liking th an the terms for the USA.

      C//
      • True. But China is also not governed by a clan that made a fortune with selling the raw material for CO2.
    • Do you know why China signed it? China is exempt from its requirements, being a "developing nation".

      Sheesh.
      • Yes it was a no brainer for China but not so easy for EU countries such as Britain. For the US it is politically impossible for Bush to warm to the Kyoto deal now that he has heaped such scorn on it. However that does not mean the US should give up on the idea of a treaty. The reluctance of the US to place any limits on CO2 emmisions has more to do with Bush's "base" than with the economy or exemptions granted to other nations (ditto for Australia).

        The "market" can not sort out pollution problems unless
    • http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos / no.html [cia.gov]

      "Only Saudi Arabia and Russia export more oil than Norway. - But with a population of only 4.5 million, Norway is the largest per-capita producer of oil by far."

      A portion of the oil goes into plastics, and a small amount is used for lubricating, but over 95% is burned for fuel. Does Norway take no responsibility for this?"

      But under Kyoto, Norway is responsible only for what they personally burn - they are not responsible, even though they are

    • While other nations like New Zealand have too many gas emitting sheep. It's not always about the humans. And, by the way, China is exempt from its requirements.
  • I don't understand why. Why should we spend money on collecting CO2 just so we can throw it away by pumping it down at the bottom of the sea?
    Collecting, processing and storing CO2 will cost some serious amount of money. So it will only happen if it can be used for something that earns back some of the money. The only thing I can think of is as "fill masses" in oil and gas wells to increase pressure so one can extract more oil/gas.

    But the whole idea is hideously expensive so it probably only makes sense

  • GMTA (Score:2)

    by haaz ( 3346 )
    I'd thought of this, but I know of know possible way to suggest it to sympathetic ears, much less make it happen. Glad to see it come up in other, more authoritative circles.
  • Seriously implement changes in our energy infrastructure, i.e., using readily available alternative fuels like BIODIESEL (a Google search will educate you on the subject) and plant more TREES along highways and in cities. TREES love CO2, they eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner! These can grow faster for providing paper for a variety of product - would even will the approval of extreme environmentalists because we could harvest the trees in the cities and along highways instead of in forests. Forget
  • Why couldn't we release the CO2 in space? I know there's some science reason why not, but I just wanted to know what it is.

    • Re:Stupid Question: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by ecko3437 ( 802386 )
      I'm not exactly sure, but this is what I think:

      When you breathe in air (O2 with some other minute elements), you exhale CO2, right? You took a certain amount of air and turned it into energy, which then gave off CO2 (or something like that). That CO2 is then recycled by plants back into O2.

      Now what if we took that CO2 and launched it into space? The plants have nothing to recycle. That CO2 that would be turned back into air has now left the planet for good, and isn't coming back. By doing this, you t

    • Ignoring for a moment that we need the oxygen portion here on earth, how would you propose to get the CO2 into space in the first place?

      You can't just build a giant smoke-stack to pump it up there, as the earths gravitational well is just going to pick it all back up again. So then what? Load a ton or two at a time into rockets, blast them beyond the moon, and then leave them there? That in and of itself is a massive waste of energy and resources just to build and launch all those rockets, and even then

  • Plant life. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Coleco ( 41062 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @06:50PM (#13959750)
    Plant life makes a great carbon sink. That's how all that carbon ended up in fossil fuels in the first place.

  • Energy required (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Dilaudid ( 574715 )
    Anyone know how much energy it would require to collect the CO2 and pump it a mile underwater?
  • So Zhang thinks he can fart in the bathtub and keep it to himself, if the tub is deep enough? Who will risk it?
  • Does any one think that this is a bad idea. Let's trap vast amounts oxigen at the bottom of the ocean as liquid CO2 or as carbonates. This way it can't be matabolized by plants and released into the asmosphear as O2 where it will certianly contribute to the green house effect.

    The green house effect has plaged our fragile Earth since before the extinction of the dinosaurs. If we want to survive we must start a zero tolerance campaign against anything that causes the green house effect. Obviously we can st
  • Why don't we just remove the oxygen and make diamonds or at least coal out of the CO2? Oh wait I see that's ridiculous -- the energy cost to do that would be too great.

    Never mind the NIMBY BANANA exploding subsurface stuff.

  • It's been a while since I've taken science or horticulture, but don't trees absorb CO2 and change it into ocygen? You know, that stuff we breathe.

    If we are able to seperate the excess CO2 out like that, what about taking it into a forest and releasing it there? Or would the overabundance kill the trees?

    Maybe capture it all and store it up, then launch it to Mars with some planting robots. Have the robots plant seeds (for plants that can withstand varying climates) in the ground, have some water to water the
    • I'm not a horticulturist, but from my understanding plants take CO2 (1 part carbon and 2 parts oxygen) and with the power of the sun break it down into carbon and release the oxygen. Hence plants and animals are carbon based organisms. Mostly because I think animals evolved from similar organisms that ate plants and then each other later down the road.

      Mostly the carbon in the plant and animal material that got converted to oil plus energy and when we burn oil it combines with oxygen in the atmosphere produc
      • I'm not a horticulturist, but from my understanding plants take CO2 (1 part carbon and 2 parts oxygen) and with the power of the sun break it down into carbon and release the oxygen.

        The released oxygen actually comes from water that has been split using energy from the sun. The hydrogen from the water is combined with CO2 to produce sugars, etc.
  • There's this amazing technology that can sequester carbon. Not only is it completely natural, it's also solar powered and requires very little maintenance. And you can also use its byproducts as fuel, building materials or even paper. They're probably foreign to most coal power plant owners, but they're called "trees."

    But seriously, we solve the problem of pumping CO2 in to the air, where we didn't foresee the outcome, by pumping it into the oceans, where we also don't know the outcome?

    Here's a clue: MAKE

  • Hey, I've got an idea! How about we produce less? You know carbon neutral
    energy sources, solar energy, etc. Nah! Never happen. Not as long as big
    business is controlling energy.
  • ...that was dumped into the ocean into the 1950s on the sound ecological principle of "out of sight, out of mind."
  • Gonna have to just keep paying the fines and dumping directly. It's cost effective!

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